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dreams

I don’t often remember the content of my dreams but on occasions I do, vividly. When I do, certainly rarely, if ever, do I remember the specific dates when I had particular dreams. I don’t keep a dream diary, maybe I should… But, there is a date that has stuck in my mind and a dream that has not faded from my memory. Despite sharing some initial thought on this dream and making it available for interpretations via social media as you do… (and via psychotherapy, of course), I feel quite self-conscious about writing this piece. It feels somewhat more personal than usual. More exposing. Perhaps something worth returning to. I had that dream in the early hours of December 29th 2015.

The tears of a friend

My dream was set in France. In the neighbourhood I grew up in. As I walked about, I bumped into an old friend of mine. It actually felt as though he walked into me. I remember him as one of the cool kids. He was also strikingly beautiful both in my dream and in my recollection. He is of Senegalese descent and one might say, a picture of virility. Tall, statuesque, ebony like dark skin, deep voiced and overflowing with charisma and confidence. I had not seen him since we were both teens but we instantly recognised one another. I asked how he was almost confused by the unexpected meeting and he told me his partner, who I also knew had died. Bow-headed, he started sobbing and never uttered another word. He was crying so profusely I felt completely disarmed. Utterly grief stricken. That is what he was. I put my arms around him and he sobbed and sobbed there. We were in the middle of the street but there was no one else around. He sobbed until I woke up. Shaken.

Making sense of dreams…

The consideration of dreams in therapy has fallen out of fashion, arguably for good reasons. Perhaps this explains my feelings of discomfort too… And, when dreams are considered the political is often overlooked. Perhaps this is unsurprising given the epistemological bases within which dreams tend to be considered in the mental health field. In traditional psychoanalytical theory, dreams are thought to be ‘wish fulfilment’, representation of childhood material or of unresolved conflict which we cannot consciously tolerate. They consequently inform the dreamer and/or her analyst of repressed, unacceptable parts of the self which are to be discovered, decrypted, decoded. Their more public nature is rendered almost irrelevant, if not non-existent. As a result, some have likened dream work to colonialism. With western analysts, discovering the new territories of the unconscious and characterising their local inhabitants as too primitive to inform public or political matters.

Thus, those who may be analytically inclined may focus their curiosity on understanding who my friend might have been representing in the dream. Given that in our dreams we are believed to often see our own desires reflected in others, the most obvious interpretation might be that I was crying through him. That I was processing some unresolved personal grief or trauma, something related to my relationship with my mother, perhaps. Nightmares indeed commonly follow traumatic experiences. They can be a sign that one is struggling to make sense of a situation where our psychological or physical integrity might have been threatened or compromised. As there was nothing which was race or oppression related in the actual (literal) content, an apolitical and decontextualised interpretation of the dream may choose to omit these aspects.

The political content of dreams

Worth noting however… On December 28th 2015, Officer Loehmann, was cleared of any criminal wrongdoing in the shooting of Tamir Rice. Loehmann was a white police officer in training who fatally shot Tamir on November 22nd 2014 in Cleveland. Tamir was a 12-year-old Black boy. When he was killed, he was playing in a local playground with a toy gun which was mistaken for a real firearm, within seconds of the police arriving at the scene. A wave of outrage, condemnation and protests at what was widely held to be an unreasonable and hasty use of deadly force, ensued. Primarily in the United States but also across the world. On December 28th 2015, Tamir’s death was essentially officially declared to have been caused by his own actions. This was despite the video of the killing and police records evidencing a range of failings and miscommunication. Also worth noting…Tamir reminded me of my middle son, not only because they were the same age, I also thought they looked strikingly alike.

Dream content is affected by the dreamer’s culture and more importantly, by the socio-political context. Consequently, it has a collective a dimension. Existing power relations are a precursor of our dreams and, our dreams are imbedded in power relations. When a woman dreams of being raped, for example, we might interpret that unacceptable repressed sexual impulses might have become fulfilled in her dream. Alternatively, we might consider that her dream may be an attempt by her psyche at trying to process the rape culture within which her life must be lived. Similarly, when we recurrently dream of public humiliation, one might suggest the audience in such dreams to be the dreamer’s own ‘super-ego’, an inner critic signalling disapproval of certain aspects of the dreamer’s life. Or, we might focus on how our collective need for self-esteem is deeply anchored in capitalism and its deriving need for competition. And, consider the latter dream to be a manifestation of the resulting psychological tension.

Like many dreams, mine was one of a meeting. It was both personal and public. Personal in terms of the intimacy of the physical contact and the fact that no one else could be seen in the dream, and public because we were in the streets. My friend’s physicality sharply contrasted with his emotional state challenging constructions of masculinity and particularly of Black virility. A political issue. The underlying theme was death and associated feelings of grief, sadness, despair but also emotional overwhelm. Those feelings of loss were juxtaposed onto a context of racial injustice. Another political issue. In the material context of the dream, impunity seems to be the most likely response when Black people die at the hands of the state. Some of the people killed are bound to look like our sons and daughters or our sisters or brothers or fathers or mothers or friends… In the material world, the expectation of Black strength and of invulnerability kills and the collective trauma inflicted upon people of African descent is erased yet continually re-enacted so that we are not allowed to grieve and fully experience the injustices done onto us. The personal does not cease to be political when we start dreaming. Social wounds do get imbedded onto our unconscious. Sometimes we relive them in our sleep and they may connect us to experiences that are more collective. Perhaps, dream analysis needs to more routinely consider more political interpretations.

Thank you for reading.

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